I suppose my problem with racist marches in England, is it’s always people who clearly don’t have any friends who are much different to them. Just a sea of white faces and outfits from Sports Direct. I mean don’t get me wrong, I love Sports Direct, but where we see homogeneity, we see a problem.
This quote from Moltman sums it up nicely: “So the homogenous community is not a natural community at all. It is a community for the common suppression of fear through permanent self-corroboration.” (he’s a German writer/theologian, so not a lot of English references, but still, banging quote).
Personally, I think diversity of friendship groups is as important as diversity of communities – it has been for me personally, and it seems to have always been a crucial part of our brilliance as a species; that people with different specialisms, ideas and values come together and do brilliant things. Does your tribe have someone obsessed with repetition? Great! They build the fences. The person with insanely good sense of smell looks after food storage. The person who’s great with a sword is as important as the person who runs at the slightest sign of trouble – our tribes that survived to procreate were the ones that were home for both, and affected by all – including the newcomers.
Especially those fleeing hardship, because they’ll be the ones willing to work hardest for the new life they’re investing in. If you disagree with that, try removing immigrants from our farms and factories and the NHS, and see what happens (oh, you did?! And what happened? Yeah. Complete and utter shitshow). And so where we see homogenous societies we see short-lived-ness. Sparta was famously a community exclusively made of fighters … and how long did that last? Lots of pride and chest-thumping doesn’t help much when you’re wiped out thanks to your muscle-headed inability to diversify.
In fact the only value that doesn’t fit in functional human communities – is hatred. And therein lies the paradox of free speech, that in order to protect it we must silence those who would silence and intimidate others.
It seems that the broader story of humanity’s history is one of diversity: – and if you think I’m talking out of my arse that’s fine, but I do recommend you read ‘The Pattern Seekers’ and ‘Empire of Normality’, both of which go into the anthropology and wonder of our diversity – from very different angles. I do feel confident in saying that hatred is just the antithesis to everything that makes humans so very, very excellent. Surely that’s not a controversial thing to point out.
So why do we still do it? Do we still harbour fears so deep that pinning them on a certain culture or ethnicity makes us feel good? Do we seek the safe harbour of a group identity pinned on something as small-minded as the colour of our fucking skin? Are we still that stupid? According to the 150,000 people who marched in London yesterday, yes we are. And the irony of the usage of the words ‘unite’ and ‘reform’, when the bile spewing from their leaders does exactly the opposite, moving people to divide and step way, way back.
Perhaps the most annoying but textbook-predictable moment, was when Elon Musk joined the racist event via live feed to tell these 150,000 people to overthrow the elected government as well. The poster-child for Apartheid stands shoulder-to-shoulder with convicted rapists and abusers, and uses his platform to encourage as much white supremacy as possible. And people keep buying his stuff? Great. Anyone who still thinks it’s a good idea for billionaires to exist needs a slap.
Starmer put it well:
[Via BBC]
Anyway, I’ll stop ranting. Did you join the Tommy Robinson march? Do you get your very strong and comforting opinions from X and Youtube? Have you bought into ultra far-right lies and misinformation, preying on your sensibilities and making you feel like white people are being somehow pushed out from ‘our’ beloved lands? Is your identity challenged when you see a brown person on the street? Are you a total cunt? Let me know, it’d be interesting to hear from **checks notes** a Neo Nazi. I know a bunch of you guys frequent my blog because I’m a tolerant and kind motherfucker lets face it, so feel free to share your ‘philosophy’, I look forward to the confused and waffling bs, and my overly patient attempts to respond.
In lighter news, boobies.
( . )( . )
I think you’re way off the mark here.
I mean protest in general is a wonderful thing, but white supremacists can do one.
I think labelling large swathes of the population as white supremacists is a dangerous rhetoric which will lead to people being hurt.
If ‘large swathes of the population’ align with a lad like Tommy Robinson, then yeah people are going to get hurt I’d have thought. Especially when the Duke of Apartheid wades in and demands violence. Cool crowd, zero concerns.
I don’t think you got the point, to which I must ask the question:
Is the requirement for minority who in exercising free will came in to foreign country to assimilate and integrate with local majority to maintain social cohesion and stability or is it the duty of majority to cater to minorities at which point you are in an immediate impasse because you will always have minorities which hate each other thus creating a conflict prone situation, problem of the west in general is the latter approach in guise of diversity, which is fine only when it is a secondary feature of otherwise culturally unified society, existence of over 100 sharia courts in UK is a direct report of failure in integration, this means that in a single country there are societies that follow different standards of law and therefore moral compass, you tell me how that can be navigated without conflict
Christ that was a long sentence. You create a false dichotomy saying it’s either ‘they become us’, or ‘we cater to them’ – classic Daily Mail logic.
I would always encourage people to actually *literally* work/volunteer directly [I do; it’s not that difficult to get involved] with already integrating communities of humans because that helps to understand people and how they can work together. And yes people are bellends sometimes [I certainly am] but communities are organic and it can work.
The only time it doesn’t work is when fear and hatred gets involved (eg. Telegraph-fueled comments around Burkas or Sharia), because that makes everything polarised and crystalline.
🤯😱😴😴😴😴 just a big rant… I’m sure a bunch will chime in. Me… naw… just waiting for news of new comics
“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with ….. boobies!!”
It’s all just to heavey these days, I come here to get away from it, I come here for the boobies. Please, oh PLEEEESE park the political BS on a Political BS page and give us some beautiful, refreshing boobies.
Yeah that’s why I posted this in the same few days. Have a lovely break, for sure
Yeah, it’s always some form of “Fear of The Other”, where it is far easier to feed our own division and isolation than it is to do the work needed to understand then bridge it.
Reaching out is hard if you’ve seldom done it. It takes practice, commitment and continuity. Starting with the mindset, then on to actions IRL. It also starts with openness, vulnerability, kindness and courage. Pride and ego get in the way.
It took me a long time, in fits and starts, to push this closer to my center. Partly due to reading philosophy, and partly due to receiving some really good therapy. Still working on it.
❤️👌
Hi Sindy, I’m British Jamacain and marched in the protest at the weekend, I never really thought of my self as a far right racist, I’ve met a few growing up in London, but didn’t personally see any on Saturday. Should I wear a badge or something then people realise?
No need for a badge if you march with a character like Tommy Robinson. Protest things, by all means – I’d always encourage that. But aligning with white supremacists? Not a great look irrespective of where you come from.
Damn right, as a white male African* I couldn’t agree more. Protest stand-up for your rights but when you stand with a waste of biomass that is Tommy Robinson then you are standing for the denial of rights to others. I find the hypocrisy of Brits whining about the diversity in the UK hilarious. You colonise the planet injecting your myopic for queen and country drivel (along with all the suffering caused) into other parts of the world, then complain when the world comes knocking on your door. Thankfully for level headed Brits like SAJ.
*for people this confuses think a little harder I know it is challenging for so many of you.
👌
I’m just surprised the Prime Minister said something right for once.
Yeah it was a nice surprise. There’d been lots of calls for him to speak out for a while now, guess this forced him to actually say it.
We’re back to the old Brexit conundrum. Not all Leavers were appalling racists, but all appalling racists voted Leave. Not all marchers are white supremacists, but all whi…. you see my point.
Personally I’d feel I’d let myself and my family down if I ever found myself on that side of the barricades. People may have legitimate concerns, but let’s not help racists clowns achieve their goals, eh?
Yeah good points 👍
Reading the STFW Universe, yet again. This time, I’m trying to envision the author’s perspective, goals and drive. As if I were an editor or proofreader, feeding back comments and questions to the author. But I’m not reading the comics in STFW order this time, instead I’m going by whichever comic pulls me next. This time it’s Tira Yugen’s TRMFB.
I may have mentioned this before, but the first woman I truly loved was 10 years older than me. I was 22, a sailor in the US Navy, she was 32, freshly divorced from an Air Force puke (that’s what we called them), with a 9 year-old daughter. I’ve always intended to write the story up someday, but I’ve never gotten to it, though I already know the title: “Wingman”. You see, my Navy buddy met someone sweet who wanted her aunt to go with on their next night out. So my buddy asked me to be the wingman, knowing I’d not piss her off too much. How I went from wingman to lover is the story, but there’s no need to tell it here. I’m sharing this to let you know that TRMFB really triggered my memories.
I was thoroughly invested in the story from the first pages. No, I had no prior history with my date, but she sure had a history of her own, and it added context, maybe a bit like Kal and Anna’s previous encounters did. Plus, being a wingman sort of requires forming a bubble, if only so my buddy and his date could be free to do their own thing. I had to keep my blind-date entertained!
The physical awareness from the moment Anna opened the door feels so much like how I was dumbstruck by the woman I met. Sure, the niece was hot and cute. But the aunt was truly next-level, despite her being worn out from a hard job, and not really wanting to be there. Kal’s reaction to Anna felt, well, spot-on. But was it believable within the context of the comic? I chose to defer to the author, and just go with the (very hot) flow.
Did I wank after that first wingman date? Hell, yes. But that wasn’t due to the start of the date, but rather to the flow. How did Kal and Anna flow? Right from the start, the tease was there, and it felt sort of like a one-way mirror, where you can see the other person, but believe they can’t see you. They both were vibing from their “awkward” history, combined with the stress of the present, adding up to a pressure cooker in the moment. Yup, I’m totally sold.
Then there’s Yun. Holy fuck, what a great plot device to peel Anna bare. Their friendship is woven so well in so few words. Much like I was with some of my Navy shipmates. Talk total shit, but always have each other’s backs. Because of this, I’m choosing to view Tira Yugen as a veteran. Because that’s where this kind of friendship shit so easily happens. That’s my editor/proofreader perspective showing through. If it wasn’t obvious already, I’m no longer a neutral reader. I’m invested in the story.
As a brief aside: Anna is always touching herself. Sounds weird, right? I mean, does that happen in real life? I’m here to tell you that, yes, it does happen, especially when a woman’s heart, mind and body all go to war at the same time, trying to make sense of whatever is happening. I have another personal story, with the working title of “The Fourth Woman I Should Have Married”, that is so over-the-top that it would be unbelievable if I hadn’t actually lived it. (And decades later, we’re still friends!)
Again, I’m doubly down with the story. Does that story flow smoothly from infatuation to intercourse? Hell, no! The hiccups TY includes are awesome and appropriate, at least based on my own lived experience. Crazy shit happens, and most of the time just we just do our best to try to cope with it, then ride it out. The doubt that Kal and Anna each feel fits so well into the overall story.
OK, I’m totally biased by now. Will they travel a road like my own? Sure, I’ve already read the story so many times, but I’m trying to see what YT is doing here, how, why, and toward what goals.
Then there’s the Dutch. My step-Mom was Dutch (my Dad married two of the best women on the planet), and I also learned some words. This pulled me in even further, as my step-Mom was claimed by cancer only a few years ago. I miss her so much, and I really liked seeing Dutch used in such a dirty context! Made me smile, and I easily imagined my step-Mom also smiling if I could have told her about it. One of her slanted smirk/shame smiles, to be sure!
The big clues arrive when the story circles around to again include Chun. She’s both the mirror and the thermostat, helping set the temperature while not wanting anyone to get burned. I so wish I could write characters like that! Well, I’ve never tried, and now it seems I must. If TY can do it, so can I, right?
Editorial comment: The awkward moments are the best. Tension spiraling so high, only to be diffused by a fumbling and hasty break. Stepping (or leaping) back from the precipice. Yeah, I’ve been there. Feel the cringe! Some may think this breaks the story flow, but for me it only turns it up another agonizing notch. Will they or won’t they? We know the answer (I mean, it is a porn comic), but we want to see how it comes about.
Another comment: Kal’s inner voice seems just right. I think Anna’s may also be, but I’ve only rarely had the chance to share a woman’s deepest inner thoughts. So I’m drawn to her being natural and genuine as well, but I’m not totally sure. I like the uncertainty! (And I hope all women I meet are equally horny. Let’s keep it simple, mate. Remember, we’re the target audience.)
Another note: I love the “breaking the fourth wall”, when the character stares at the reader. I’m also a theater geek, and I’m very critical about when and how that wall is to be broken. Both SH and YT break it rarely enough to keep it fresh and special. And, of course, to pull me even further into the story, with a blush of self-awareness.
Pilates? For me, on my date, it was dancing. I have two whole chapters reserved for that, but the net result is that getting the body into the right place lets the mind and heart follow. And, yes, the characters were dancing an elaborate and erotic tango during the Pilates scene.
Ah, then the hug scene on the couch. For us, it was a booth at Waffle House. My buddy and his date were sitting next to each other enjoying their meals. My blind date and I were tangled up like snakes on the other side of the booth. Snuggled and sexy, just like Kal and Anna on the couch. But without the skin touching, though she was leaning up against some wood. I’m SO vibing here!
Then come all the “first times”. Kal and Anna were much more, well, “frequent” and “sooner”, than my date and I. But no less intense! After our third date, and after returning to her place, and after her daughter was sound asleep, she made it clear that I would be there for breakfast. That where our stories reconnect, but the path there was so different. I was a day away from turning 22 and still a virgin, and when she made her intentions known, I was overwhelmed. I felt so insecure, so inexperienced, so unworthy, that I started crying. I was ashamed of my tears, and wanted to bolt out the door.
Much like the incident with Kal after his first time, before my first time my date said simple words of power to me, accepting my fears and easing my tears and shame, letting me know I belonged with her here, right here, right now. That’s what a decade of life can provide, so much like Anna did for Kal.
Did I say I was invested in the story? Fuck, yeah. The story was hitting me like a hammer to a gong. I began to wonder what life YT had lived to let such a story be written. How could any story be so much like mine? It’s not that it’s like mine. It’s that I may be the perfect target audience. To share a story so different than mine, yet so similar, with the same feeling, yet at different spots.
How the hell can I possibly provide objective feedback to this? If it wasn’t already clear, I’m totally in the subjective zone, and I hope to bring you with me. I’m skipping past all the touchie-feelies.
Let’s talk about the Pat part. I once had to cope with my date’s ex, and I was in fear of being beaten to a pulp for every minute of it. Yet I was able to avoid inserting myself into the situation, and making it about her and their daughter. While he hated the divorce, he loved his daughter, and he came to see I loved her as well. Good thing I get along well with kids, right? Like Pat, that was a “one and done”, and he was out of the picture after that. What’s weird is he became less strict and insistent about visits with his daughter, which to me felt he trusted me to also love her. Maybe not, but that’s how I took it at the time.
In the Pat part, TY shrunk my experiences into a single, brief conversation. Same finish, much shorter path. Wish I had such words back then, but I muddled through. I didn’t make her ex any better, like Kal did, but I did bypass some of his fears and jealousy. Surprisingly close to TRMFB, right?
Shit. This has become the story I wasn’t going to share here. Sorry!
Bottom line, kindness is the killer capability. Always be kind, no matter the stress, no matter the fear. It’s not about being brave, but about being willing to be yourself. Be honest. Be vulnerable. Be open. Don’t fear judgement. Embrace and encourage the good. Be neutral and accepting, rather than aggressive and judgmental.
Damn, I love this story. Whoops, lost my objectivity. My bad.
Awh thanks Bob, what a great comment. I can’t speak for TY (ahem), but I’m sure they’d say … yep.
You write really well too – talking about hammer hitting a gong and all that stuff, you lead me through your experience really engagingly, which is good work! So … yeah, it’s those life experiences isn’t it? That real stuff. The awkward and stupid moments that stick in your brain. We shouldn’t belittle them, and we should remember that in our stories – that its the little things that resonate with people. Because that’s what connects us all, what makes us human.
Aaaaand, that brings me to one of the best titles ever; “One Human, Being”. My mind delights in wordplay, and that just tickled me silly. Oh, the power of a lowly comma!
I’m so envious I want to toss Molotov Cocktails. **I** want to be the top wordsmith and grammarian! But never let it be said that I’m unwilling to learn from others.
What matters more is how that wordplay title repeatedly plays out in the story. It turns a semantic joke into something far deeper, far more meaningful. Such huge authorial balls!
I’m so happy they’re resurrected in Lithium. If only to see Mike fall at the last moment. What a denouement! Dealing with character death in comics is hard, so it begs for every bit the full-blown theatrical production to help prepare the audience for what’s coming.
Someone somewhere said something like this:
“If ten people and a nazi sit around a table, eleven nazis are sitting around a table.”
And that’s the thing: If you don’t want to be likened to nazis, don’t act like nazis. If you don’t want to be connected to nazis, don’t be in connect with nazis. If you march with nazis, chant with nazis, share ideas with nazis… Hell yeah people are going to call you a nazi. And if you don’t like it, tough titties. Like these:
( . Y . )
Holy shit those are some tough titties! And I’m here for them.
I’m not sure why I’m blogging here about TRMFB. But in for a penny…
I don’t read Dutch well, so I had no “inner voice” when trying to read words I didn’t know, as I wasn’t even sure how to sound them out. And my inner voice was male when I had no specific memory of my Dutch stepmom saying the words. Not good enough!
I typed Anna’s words into a Dutch text-to-speech generator. The first I found was https://crikk.com/text-to-speech/dutch/, and I selected the “Fenna” voice for Anna. Unfortunately, the resulting speech lacked situational or emotional nuance (like whispering or giggling, sarcastic or enthusiastic tone, etc.), though the flat-ish delivery likely made it easier for me to recognize some words, though I did have to slow down the playback by 25%. I was able to catch the same words Kal did, plus a few more. Cool!
That means it is possible to turn all the comic text into speech. Good thing TRMFB has so few characters, meaning few voices. Gotta love a lockdown comic! Kinfolk, Grace, RTZF, Skybloom and Madiy & Crash also have relatively few characters, but the other STFW Universe comics would be nightmares to speechify.
Hmmm. I can embed audio content (or a link to it) within a PDF, then have it play when a page is displayed. Even better!
I also found (but haven’t tried) tools that claim to be able to OCR a comic, then place invisible text over the same text in the comic. Ingenious! I may then be able to pull the text from the resulting PDF, add the speaker ID, feed that text to a speech generator (where the speaker ID selects the voice), then tag the resulting audio back to that same text bubble in the comic.
Say the speech. Play the music. Do all the media! Bwahahahaha!
Well, maybe start with just the few bits of non-English text and the music across the STFW Universe (maybe even including the bits of songs sung by characters, such as in Skybloom).
Thoughts? Criticism? Feedback? Adoration?
To those who object to your occasional political forays I say “fooey”! Boobies do not exist in a vacuum and need a healthful environment in which to grow and prosper. And that environment cannot tolerate intolerance.
Your instincts are seldom off the mark and, who knows, maybe those who are intolerant toward your obviously enlightened outlook may have unknowingly absorbed some of it through your works.
We can always hope.
Bravo! Well said.
OK, I was going to skip covering a couple items in TRMFB, but what the hell, why not finish it off.
Kal’s dad. Woah. Zen and love incarnate? If anything, he’s Kal’s Chun, but from a different perspective. He opens Kal and Anna like a tin of tuna. He sees deep, and lets them know in a safe and loving way.
Personally, I’ve never had someone like that in my life, until I’d had enough therapy by my early 40s to do it for myself. Wonderful therapy, that. But I do envy Kal having a dad like John, just a bit. Fortunately, I come from a long-lived line, so I’ll have no fewer years to reap the results.
However, John does reveal a problem. It’s Kal Smit, right? Yet his dad is John ARCHER! Is this a UK thing where folks pick and choose the last name for their offspring? I’m so confused. At least Goodfellow is a solid option. How many generations is Marcus removed from Kal and Anna? My hope is it is just one, and Marcus is talking to Kal in the early scenes of Skybloom. Kal would be a dad to Marcus just as John was to him. Even if more generations are involved, I like the symmetry with Kal’s dad.
The second item is the final scene with Kal and Anna in the shower. I was so expecting that shower to fill with crash foam and become a stasis chamber, just so they could reappear at the end of Lithium. That’s what showers DO in the STFW Universe, right? I want ALL my favorite characters to be there at the end!
Heheh, some good ideas there. Yeah I feel like John Archer has that kind of pseudo-absent sovereign vibe about him – much like I go for with the Emperor in my comics; a love that doesn’t control but is effortlessly FOR us, relentless and rooted. Giving occasional nudges and reminders. Asking questions at the right times to keep us exploring in the direction of freedom, that sort of thing.
Interesting about the surnames – when a couple divorce, the children will choose (depending on age) which parent to stick with, then surnames are part of the discussion. Children going with the mother could want to take her maiden surname as a fresh start, depends on circumstances but certainly the law allows people to make decisions that are best for them. And for all we know, Kal’s Mum and Dad may never have married, and Kal’s always gone by Smit. There isn’t a mandatory default-to-the-father’s-surname for anyone, that sounds like a patriarchal hangover to me but who knows – we’re talking about cultural likelihoods but certainly in legal terms, surnames can follow the desires of the people involved.
Yeah, I’m a nit-picker, which is why I pitched myself as a proofreader/editor at the start.
Great link between John and, well, God. God does John, but with infinite power! BTW, love the God/Emperor character, especially the Garden. I’ve built similar gardens through my years of therapy, and they are similarly revealing and healing. We need safe places to do the hard work on ourselves. Build a garden, then dig in!
Sounds like I did toss a bit of a grenade into the character naming. Sorry! Trying to weave so many comics into a semi-cohesive whole (toward Lithium) is bound to have nits for folks like me to pick. I think that’s what proofreaders do!
Ok, shit, then there’s the TRMFB final-final arc, with Chun as the lead-in. What a wonderful lead-in! The art is truly top-notch. And “Chun as a total wanker” is so believable, especially when she texts Anna. Love it!
To me, this sets up a throuple, where Kal and Anna have more than enough space for Chun to become a dearly loved third-wheel, until she finds her own magic. It doesn’t really matter anyway, if none of them are there at the end of Lithium. But still, what could it mean and be? Could Chun have a child from Kal? Enquiring minds want to know!
However, my head-cannon is that John Archer partners Chun, and damn the generational differences! Not because it ties up loose ends, but because both characters are “can openers” for Kal and Anna, and certainly deserve some opening of their own. Without adding extraneous characters. This is a place to put a bow and call it good. Chun feels like someone who could hunt silver foxes!
Yes, I just finished a bottle of a most excellent 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon from a boutique winery, a bottle I’ve been saving for, well, just because. When I’m writing, I somehow give myself permission to gradually and gently titrate my consciousness with quality alcohol. Maybe I say things I shouldn’t, but I try to do so where only a select audience could read them.
If you are reading this, then you are my tribe.
Cheers!
Hahh! I like that descriptions of them both as ‘can openers’ for Kal and Anna, that’s an astute observation I don’t think I’d seen it like that before, so thank you. And a wonderful use of titrate as well heheh, someone used to getting medication right, must be a sign of my age I understand exactly what you mean 🙂
Yeah, I like it when I can jump up a level (or thirty), and try to see some larger (if ephemeral) connections and patterns in a writer’s works (and worlds).
I’ve written two novels, both based in the ST:TNG universe. Fanfic. Because I’m totally unable to do my own world-building. Yet even there, I use small cracks in ST lore to break open enough room for my own stories to have their own unique tangents. While I love my novels, I’m completely unable to edit them for wider sharing (on sites like RR). Editing is like shoving a sword into my baby!
So, more often, I critique the works of others. Sorry!
I’ll never do a comic, because there simply isn’t room for the number of words I’d need to use to explain myself. Comics trade words against art, and let the art carry the larger theme. Such art is anathema to me, I truly don’t understand it, though I certainly do appreciate it!
I’m so down with whatever comes next.
BTW, I’m 69 in a few weeks. You?
Ah yeah, nicely put – I know how you feel about edits. I’ve written a little non-comic stuff and yeah, who wants to kill their baby?!
In terms of age, you know, I’m old enough heheh.
I’m quite chuffed I get to be this age for an entire year!
It’s like the perfect page count for a risqué comic. Sure, more pages are always eagerly welcomed, but there is an “elegant sufficiency” to 69.
I’m building a list of creative ways to tell folks my age. Unfortunately, the list presently contains mainly coarse puns and slimy double-entendres, but I guess I gotta start with my strengths.
People who like Tommy Robinson need to use their favourite search engine to check up on his criminal history to see what sort of a person he is.
Everything from prison sentences for football hooliganism, assaulting police officers and mortgage fraud to stalking and harassing a female journalist whom was researching a story on him misappropriating donation funds.
Yeah, THIS is supposed to be the guy to rally around.